Today, Damascus and Aleppo were pounded by NATO-backed terrorists’ rockets, according to various reports, including Syrians IN Damascus, like those who maintain the Facebook page “A Mortar’s Diary”, as well as Syrian news site SANA (which noted rocket attacks in Aleppo today as well):

“Two civilians were killed and two were injured on Monday in a terrorist rocket attack which targeted al-Khalediya neighborhood in Aleppo city.

A source at the Police Command told SANA’s correspondent that terrorists located in Bani Zeid neighborhood targeted al-Khalediya neighborhood with rocket shells, killing two civilians, injuring two more, and causing material damage to houses and properties.

A source at the University Hospital said that two people were admitted to the hospital’s ER with wounds of medium severity and received treatment.

On Sunday, nine civilians were injured in a terrorist rocket attack on al-Mogambo neighborhood in the city of Aleppo.

Meanwhile, 13 civilians were injured on Monday in a series of terrorist mortar attacks on neighborhoods in Damascus.

A source at the Police Command told SANA’s correspondent that one mortar shell landed near Sheikh Raslan Mosque in Bab Touma neighborhood, injuring 10 civilians who were rushed to the French Hospital.

The source added that three more shells landed in Baghdad Street, injuring three civilians, and another shell struck Sheikh Mehiddin Mosque in Rukn Eddin area, causing significant material damage to the mosque, while two more shells fell in Shamdin square and al-Jibbeh, causing material damage.

Seven more shells landed in Harasta suburb, causing material damage to cars and shop but no casualties.

Terrorists fired scores of mortar and rocket shells on Damascus and its countryside on Sunday, killing two civilians and injuring 38.”

“…Jaysh Al-Islam (Army of Islam) and Faylaq Al-Rahman (Al-Rahman Corps) fired over 100 rockets and mortar shells into the nation’s capital of Damascus on Sunday, killing a dozen civilians and injuring over 60 others.

The majority of the rockets and mortar shells fired by Jaysh Al-Islam and Faylaq Al-Rahman were reportedly launched in the nearby cities of Harasta, Jobar, Douma, Zamalka, Zibdeen, Kafr Batna, and Beit Sawa.

This is not the first time that Jaysh Al-Islam and their affiliates have targeted the densely populated city of Damascus, the Islamist group and their allies fire indiscriminate rockets and mortar shells daily, while they also obstruct civilians from fleeing the cities under their control.”

However, I did come across some prior lying and misleading MSM pieces on similar assaults. For example, from an Aug 12 LA times article, which I’d like to point out began with words essentially nullifying the terror and lethality of these routine terrorist rocket and mortar attacks on Syrian cities like Damascus, Aleppo, Latakia, Foua, Kafarya….

“Syrian state media reported five people were killed and 55 wounded in the opposition barrage on Damascus, which is under tight governmentcontrol.“

**WHICH IS UNDER TIGHT GOVT CONTROL. Oh, okay, that’s justification for assaulting Damascus residential and civilian areas with deadly mortars. Syrians living under this hellish nightmare that is the NATO/Saudi/Zionist/Turkish alliance war on Syria would take offense at the use of “opposition” to describe the NATO-backed mercenaries killing Syrians daily.

Okay, how about Aleppo, Latakia, Foua, Kafarya…? They’re not “Assad’s seat of power”! And in any case, so yes, the terrorists are rocketing and mortaring the Capital city… again, they are attacking civilian areas, not military ones.

*Further down:

“United Nations special envoy Staffan de Mistura accused government forces of inflicting “unprecedented levels of destruction and many deaths” on Zabadani’s civilian population through the deployment of so-called barrel bombs, crude ordinance made by packing explosives into metal tubes.”

Ummm, the people in Zabadani are the NATO-backed terrorists and supporters, these militant factions are NOT what one would describe as a “civilian population”, and are raining rockets and mortars on Damascus and surrounding areas. They, and terrorists surrounding Kafarya and Foua use (among their arsenal) cooking-gas canister (and other cylinders)-come- “hell cannons” being rained on Kafarya and Foua, Aleppo and elsewhere. In my first article on Foua and Kafarya [click here for the article], a village resident studying in Beirut described what his family is enduring:

“They fired rockets at the villages. At the beginning, it was only mortars, then they started using a larger size of mortar. Then, the militants started using cooking gas canisters as bombs, “hell cannons.”

They fire from Binnish, a few km south of al-Foua; from Ma’rat Mesreen, about 2 km to the north; and recently from the centre of Idlib they fired rockets to the village, about 8 km away.”

The militants attacking Foua and Kafarya also use far more powerful bombs, including “Western, Saudi and Turkish-supplied 500 kg rockets.” As noted in the article, “Syrian journalist Alaa Ebrahim noted on July 21 [translated from Arabic] “Kafarya and Foua towns were shelled today with 450 rockets and projectiles, and the total number has reached 1,000 since the beginning of the assault.” This culminated in a full-on attack on August 10, which saw at least 26 villagers murdered, including at least 5 children, in which up to 1,500 rockets and mortars were fired on the villages. The Nusra & co attacks continue to this day, though you wouldn’t know it reading MSM.

A contact from Foua, now living in Homs but with a grandmother and uncles still in the village, sent me two photos today that his friend there took five days ago. One is his devastated home, the other the village graveyard, where (much like the zionist regime does to the graveyards of Palestinians), even the dead find no peace from NATO’s terrorists:

As for de Mistura himself, when in late July he spoke with journalist Nizar Abboud, Abboud questioned de Mistura as to whether his self-proclaimed extensive talks with regional players included so-called ‘israel’, he replied no. Here it is (I typed out the transcript):

De Mistura: “I’ve been meeting those armed groups… those who are not terrorists—not al-Nusra and Da’esh—but all the others I have had the opportunity to meet. …many of them are purely Syrian and do realize that there is no military solution. Therefore, there is a need for some type of political formula.

Abboud: “israel” is hosting, helping and hospitalizing a lot of al-Nusra fighters, and other groups. Have you been in touch with them?”

Mistura: “No I have not, because I’m talking about the regional countries who are actually in one way or another involved or interested at the moment directly in what’s happening in Syria.”

Abboud: “‘israel’ is involved, and they show that on television that al Nusra roams freely in the separation zone of UNDOF, and one thousand or at least 600 of them have been hospitalized inside “israel”. …if they are ignored, do you think that they cannot spoil any agreement?”

Mistura: “At the moment I’ve not been discussing with them. When you look at it, the region, I’ve been calculating.. make a guess, make a guess18 different interlocutors. So, I mean, there is quite a lot to be discussed before reaching that point.”

***

Back to the shoddy LA Times piece, which at the end mentions Kefarya & Foua:

“The reported truce also extends to the mostly Shiite towns of Kefraya and Fuaa, pro-government enclaves in northwest Idlib province, which is largely under rebel control.

Rebels have long besieged the two towns, forcing the army to bring in supplies via helicopter airlift. In recent days, Sunni Islamist opposition factions have stepped up bombardment of Kefraya and Fuaa in what they have called retaliation for the government attacks against Zabadani.”

I addressed this wiley use of sectarian rhetoric in part 2 of my articles on Foua and Kefarya [click here for part 2], also addressing the brutality of the siege:

“The very few reports which have mentioned the names Kafarya and Foua have promoted a sectarian angle to the continued shelling by NATO-backed militants, portrying this as a Sunni-Shia issue. And while to be sure many of these largely foreign terrorists do adhere to the Saudi Wahhabism or Qatari/Turkey Salafism, the predominantly Shia population originally in Foua and Kafarya have long existed with their non-Shia neighbours in harmony.

…The parallels between Kafarya and Foua and the Gaza Strip, under siege since 2007, are many. Food prices have risen dramatically, and at the same time, residents largely have no income, no means of receiving their salaries if they even have work. For want of cooking fuel, people attempt to cook over wood fires…if wood can be found. There is virtually no electricity; generators can only be run if and when there is fuel, which there largely is not. Without electricity, bakeries have shut down and water is not pumped.

…According to Saer Asleam, militants have targeted the water pumping station, further complicating the water crisis. He also notes a lack of flour, even if the bakeries were running, and more critically, an acute shortage of medicines.

“There are more than 60 critically ill people, and others who have been seriously injured by the shelling. Heart and kidney patients, and those with cancer and other severe diseases, are at risk of dying due to the lack of the necessary medicines and drugs for treatments.”

Already one elderly Foua man, Mustafa Tahhan, has died from kidney failure, Asleam reports. As of August 16, Asleam stated that since the start of the complete siege of Foua and Kafarya on March 28, 2015, more than 125 residents have been martyred, with many more wounded.

…Iyad Khuder noted, “The media is ignoring Foua and Kafarya, concentrating on al-Zabadani, Yarmouk. But who are those people in Zabadani, in Yarmouk? They are people from al-Nusra, ISIS, Ahrar al-Sham…They are militants, but the media claims they are innocent people being killed by the ‘regime’.”

…The Reuters (and corporate media in general) description of them as “Shi’ite Muslim villages” (instead of simply naming the villages and their location) falls in line with the general NATO narrative of “sectarian conflict” in Syria… Syria which was known for its secular nature until the Gulf states Wahabis and Salafis flooded the country.

Further in the article, the author is deliberately confusing about the situations in both Zabadani and Kafarya and Foua:

“The United Nations envoy for Syria said last month that government air strikes had caused widespread death and destruction in Zabadani, and expressed concern that civilians were trapped both there and in al-Foua and Kefraya villages.”

This whitewashes the presence of terrorist factions in Zabadani.

Iyad Khuder points out, “the mortars and rockets raining over Damascus are directly linked with the battle of Zabadani. These missiles are originating mostly from Douma, Eastern Ghouta (Zamalka – Irbin – Qaboun – Harasta – Jobar), as well as from Qudsaya and Al-Hameh in the northern countryside of Damascus.”…”

*

This post actually just started as a slight FB rant, as it is immensely frustrating to see updates on the terrorist rocketing and mortaring of Syrian cities and villages but NOT see it be reported in MSM, and instead see the Ken Roths and other “Human Rights” agents of Empire spin the reality and accuse the Syrian government and Army of the very atrocities being committed by NATO’s terrorists. If the MSM and HRW are going to lie about this, then I’m going to shout all the louder.

See some examples of children maimed by terrorists’ mortaring, these are children I saw in a Damascus hospital last February and also in April 2014.

International Journalism Award From Mexican Press Club March 2017

about me

Eva Bartlett is an independent writer and rights activist with extensive experience in Syria and in the Gaza Strip, where she lived a cumulative three years (from late 2008 to early 2013). She documented the 2008/9 and 2012 Israeli war crimes and attacks on Gaza while riding in ambulances and reporting from hospitals.
Since April 2014, she has visited Syria 7 times, including two months in summer 2016 and one month in Oct/Nov 2016 and her latest visit in June 2017 (to Aleppo, Homs, al-Waer, Madaya, al-Tall, Damascus).
Her early visits included interviewing residents of the Old City of Homs, which had just been secured from militants, and visiting historic Maaloula after the Aramaic village had been liberated of militants. In December 2015, Eva returned to old Homs to find life returning, small shops opened, some of the damaged historic churches holding worship anew, and citizens preparing to celebrate Christmas once again.
On her 5th visit in June-August 2016, she went twice to Aleppo, also visiting Palmyra, Masyaf, Jableh, Tartous, and Barzeh district of Damascus, as well as returning again to Maaloula and Latakia.
On her sixth visit to Syria, in October and November, she visited Aleppo twice more, as well as areas around Damascus. The testimonies Eva gathered in Aleppo starkly contrasted narratives corporate media had been asserting.
Many of her published Syria writings, videos, photos can be found at this link:
https://ingaza.wordpress.com/syria/